The most expensive car in the world is the Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail.
You can look it up online and see pictures of it. It is a very fancy, and extremely good looking car. The interior of the car is made to give the impression that you are surrounded by rose petals. According to a website about the car, this rose petal interior was created using “1,603 individually cut and stenciled pieces of black sycamore, sourced in France” – Making this fancy interior took three years to achieve.
Wow…
Rolls Royce will make four of these cars. Each one sells for… are you ready for this…
30 million dollars.
Not 30 thousand… 30 million dollars
If it costs roughly 70 thousand dollars to send a young person to college – you could send 428 young people to four years of college at full cost for less than it would cost you to buy this car.
But wait…
Let’s take a step back and ask a question.
A basic question.
What is a car for?
What is a car for?
Does a car exist for the sake of the car?
Is a car for the purpose of flaunting your wealth?
Or, worse yet, is a car a way of keeping the rest of the world hidden, so that you can relax and feel comfortable while you drive past all the other poor suckers living their miserable lives?
No.
At the end of the day, a car is for getting you from place A, to place B.
It is vehicle
A horseless buggy
a form of transportation that moves people from place to place.
That’s what a car is for.
St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, prides itself on being the largest church in the world. According to a travel website that I found, the basilica is 614 feet long, 145 feet high, and under the dome, designed by Michelangelo it is 385 feet.
There are bronze plaques set in the floor of the central nave mark where the other great cathedrals of the world could fit inside the basilica. At capacity, St. Peter’s can seat up to 60 thousand people. The awe inspiring structure took 120 years to build.
The ceiling of St Peters is not at all like the ceiling of the United Church of Jaffrey. We have, what I consider to be a lovely old New England tin ceiling – though the paint is peeling in place. The wingéd cherubs on the ceiling of St Peter’s that look like happy little babies, are actually six feet tall!
This is all very impressive…
But wait…
Let’s take a step back and ask a question.
What is a Basilica?
It’s basically just a big church, right?
And what is a church for?
Does the Church exist for the sake of the Church?
Is the church a place to flaunt wealth and power? Is it the social institution where people go to be seen, and recognized as fashionable, self-righteous keepers of the status quo?
Or, worse yet, is the church a social institution that is used by people in power to control and oppress other people?
The church certainly has been all these things, but at the end of the day, the church is not for any of these things.
A church is for people to come and worship God together.
That is what a church is for.
But how do we worship God?
That can be a controversial question.
And I am feeling a little uppity about it.
I’ve been away for two weeks, and I’m coming back with ants in my pants.
Like you, I find the stories that are dominating the headlines this week to be confusing and upsetting.
And I ask the question: how might we as people of faith – as Christians who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ – respond?
But wait…
Let’s take a step back and ask… is this what church is for? Is it possible to worship God by confronting the political problems of our day?
Part of me – the part of me that honors the sacred, and has had enough of the profane (enough already!) says no.
Political speculation cheapens the act of worship, making this sanctuary yet another place where someone (in this case, your pastor) berates you with his opinion.
Everybody has an opinion, and the last thing you need, when you come to church, is more hot air. We come here to escape the incessant rant.
Is there nothing sacred anymore? Is there no haven where we can go to commune with something more grand, more beautiful and more mysterious than the ugly headlines?
These are questions that I ask myself.
How does Sunday Morning (by which I mean, this worship service) relate to the rest of the week? I have given this a lot of thought. Ideally, I want this time to be separate from the rest of the week – I want the service itself to lean into the meaning of the word “sanctuary.” I want you all to feel at ease, as you might feel looking out at a calm lake as the sun is going down.
It is this very separateness, though, that may have the benefit of preparing you for your week, refreshing you in faith, nourishing your spirit so that you can keep it all going.
All of it…
Also, I hope to leave you with a little something – something smaller than a breadbox – that you can unwrap with your mind (or with your heart) when you are headed to Belletetes on Wednesday afternoon and get stuck in traffic at the five-way.
These are values that I don’t want to lose sight of.
And yet…
And yet…
we are followers of a teacher who was a deeply moral individual – one guided by an instinct for relationship, and for community. Our teacher – the one we call our savior – was a healer who worked among the poor. He spoke his truth, even though he was well aware that by doing so he was making himself a thorn in the side of the religious establishment, and that, ultimately, he might end up on the wrong end of a Roman sword.
But, Jesus, like other moral leaders, people like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Stephen Biko, Oscar Romero… Jesus did not shy away from confronting power.
And like all those others, his moral courage got him killed.
So yes… Jesus was a healer, and we have comfort built into our faith – but so is challenge. Lest we become complacent, we must remember that if we are to follow Christ, if we are to be his disciples – we must take seriously the example that he set.
Jesus was a man of supreme and deliberate moral courage.
He did not quietly accept the status quo.
He was not afraid to stand firm on his ethical principles, even though he was surrounded by people who had lost sight of theirs.
If you want to hear an example of what I am talking about, you need go no further than the gospel stories that Carol just read for us.
The story has two parts that are related to each other. In the first part, the Pharisees witness Christ’s disciples picking grain on the sabbath. The Pharisees challenge Jesus:
why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?”
In response Jesus refers to a story about David, showing – almost as a lawyer might do – a precedent for the actions of his disciples. This done, he delivers one of his great one-liners:
“The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath;
But wait… Jesus seems to be saying…
Let’s take a step back and ask a question.
What is the Sabbath for?
Is the Sabbath for the sake of the Sabbath?
Or, worse yet, is the Sabbath a social practice that is used by people in power to control other people?
Take note, though, that Jesus does not say that we should ignore the sabbath laws.
Jesus, after all, is an observant Jew.
He recognizes the value of the sabbath.
But Jesus encourages us to take a step back and, for the sake of clarity, ask – what is the sabbath for.
And the answer, of course, is that the sabbath is for the people.
It is for the good of the people.
That’s what the Sabbath is for.
Next a man with a withered hand appears.
Aha! think the Pharisees. What’s he going to do now? Will Jesus, himself defy the Sabbath this time, and heal the man?
Jesus knows that he is being watched.
He also knows what he is going to do – there is no question in his mind (or in his heart). The grain episode was one thing – it was an almost theoretical argument. But the stakes are higher now – the man with the withered hand suffers from a very real disability that makes his life difficult. This is a test of Christ’s willingness to put into practice the principle that he just taught.
He does not hesitate. Telling the man with the withered hand to approach, Jesus asks the Pharisees:
“Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”
Pharisees do not answer. This silence gives us the opportunity to jump into Jesus’ mind for an instant, and through his grief, we come to know what Jesus knows – that if strict observance of the sabbath overrides, and gets in the way of compassion, then the sabbath is no longer serving its purpose. It is not longer for the good of the people.
Nothing… least of all religious practice… should stop a person from showing loving compassion to another person.
In this very public way, Jesus challenges the prevailing assumptions that guide the religious and cultural life of his time.
This is an act of moral courage.
It intentionally upsets the foundations upon which the religious establishment distorts something good – the sabbath – using it for a negative purpose – to keep people down.
You can’t keep Jesus down.
Because, after all, what is Jesus for?
Is Jesus there to prop up your social standing?
Is Jesus there to validate your claim to power?
No.
At the end of the day, Jesus, like the Sabbath, is for the good of the people.
Jesus is for love.
Jesus shows us love by being morally courageous.
Jesus shows us love by taking a step back and asking – what is it for?
Maybe this is the little something – the notion – smaller than a breadbox – that I can leave in your minds, for the upcoming week.
We, like Jesus, can ask this question to things in our lives.
It could apply to almost anything:
What is food for?
What is money for?
What is technology for?
A question that I asked myself last week was:
What is a politician for?
Is a politician someone who tells you what to do?
Or is a politician a public servant?
The answer, I believe, should be the answer that is for the good of the people.
What do you think?
Amen.